By Director of Content, Bradley Bell
When God is Near, You See the World Differently
Remember the first time you saw a big city? For me, having grown up in rural Kentucky, driving through Atlanta was a big city. But perhaps a better example is the first time I visited Dubai. I was in awe of the metropolitan oasis in the middle of endless desert. And I certainly couldn’t take my eyes off the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, positioned like a dark crack growing into the Arabian sky. One thought childishly interrupted another as I observed the new world around me. My tourist mode was in full-effect.
When Paul walked into Athens, he, too, had every reason to just be a tourist. Athens was, after all, the epicenter of Greek culture, mythology, architecture, athletics, and cuisine. Add to it that he was uncomfortably alone and running for his life, who would blame him for finding a secluded hostel and resting up a while?
But Paul apparently perceived the situation quite differently, as verse 16 makes clear: “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols”.
This was by no means an investigation. With an estimated 73,000 idol statues saturating the ancient city, it would have been impossible for a man with healthy eyes to not see them everywhere he looked. Indeed, “[it] was easier to find a god than a man in Athens.”
This overwhelming idolatry effectively made Paul “greatly distressed,” a multifaceted phrase that combines anger, grief, and indignation. The best way I know how to describe it is, God forbid, the effect of coming home and discovering your spouse committing adultery. The rush of blood to your head would carry with it the combined force of multiple emotions, most likely including anger and grief and indignation.
Why did Paul experience such intense distress? Only one explanation makes sense to me. He had come to know the only true God. Yet what he saw in Athens was not the beauty and sophistication for which it boasted, but a people consumed with idols. These people, created by the only true God, made to know him and honor him alone as God, exposed constantly to his eternal power and divine nature in creation, were instead glorying in their suppression of the truth. Paul’s heart, filled with the Holy Spirit, groaned within him: ‘This is not the way it should be!’
Do you ever experience this? Not a holier-than-thou attitude that shakes one hand at injustice in order to pat your back with the other. I’m talking about a compassionate disgust. Do you ever, for example, groan over the worship of power that’s on display in our city’s violence and death? Does watching the news ever lead you to anger, grief, or indignation; a longing for a new heaven and earth? Do you ever cry in your heart or out loud, “This is not the way it should be!”
If you respond, “Yeah, but I don’t see how this applies to me,” then perhaps you have yet to encounter God in such a way that you see the world differently. You may not bow down to idol statues, but that doesn’t mean you’re not bowing to something. We don’t erect idols because we think that they are actually gods, we erect them because we think we are gods. We project ourselves onto these hunks of stone and worship our own image, or at least the image of who we would like ourselves to be. We all have, as Romans 1:25 tells us, “exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised. Amen”.
And the closer God comes to us, the more we see the world differently. The lenses change. Like the developing vision of a newborn baby, we can begin to see the things closest to us. The idolatry is revealed within. The Word and Spirit say, “This is not the way it should be!” pinpointing its tumorous presence and cutting it from our marrow.
If the Spirit of God is alive within you, as he was in Paul, then this is part of his undeniable work. This is how you begin to see the world differently. Once you see the world differently, you can minister to it.